Canada

In recent months, all of Canada’s big banks have reported a vast expansion in the number of mortgages on their books with amortization periods of 35 years or longer.

Holy shit. Longer than 35 years? Like... People are buying a home at 30 and not planning to pay it off until age 70?

That's absolute insanity. I get that payments are rising with interest rates, but holy hell.

Then again, I've heard of so many people having their rentals sold out from under them that maybe I'd take a 40-year amortization if it was the only way to afford payments on buying a house. I can't imagine being forced to move year after year with kids, yet I literally met a guy who's had that happen to his family earlier this week.

Why would you be surprised?

More than 65% of Canadian homes are owned by the family that live in them. Given the propensity for owners to be older than average, and that the older you are the more likely you are to vote, that means the majority of voters have a vested interest in the price of their property.

The thing people fail to realize is that if we want affordable homes, current house values have to drop (by quite a bit) You can't simply build new cheap houses, but have all other houses stay expensive. It's not possible.

The reality is that there is no lobby group or investment class as represented in our government as landlords and real estate investors. Not oil, not lumber, not insurance, not mining, no other group even comes close. Something like 75% of MPs and MPPs own at least one investment property across the board regardless of party. They're always going to vote in self-interest, regardless of what they tell you they stand for. That's the problem.

Canada needs to adopt a public housing model. It's the only way out of this hole.

Saw a house go up, one open house with cars down the street, sold in a week over asking. The cheapest possible house in our town is over 500k, it's really crazy.

seen basically nothing

Really? The one party only stopped beating that drum to pieces so it could shriek about the inquiry.

Let the inquiry thing dry up as the nothingburger the inquiry itself is, and they'll pick up the "only we the aristocrats can properly solve the housing crisis via our secret plan we don't want to disclose today" drum and resume beating that one to bits.

Many MLA's and MP's own rental properties. But I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

The news last week was corporate pricing is raising costs, and interest rates were not having the desired effect. However this week we see interest rates going up, along the corporate price gouging.